Goodman, Lieber, Kurtzberg, and Shooter Corporation

GLK&S

Mission Statement: The law firm of Goodman, Lieber, Kurtzberg, and Shooter is a law firm which has come to specialize in superhuman law. The named partners rarely get involved in cases as most are now retired or deceased. The New York branch is headed by Miriam Goodman, the daughter of named partner Stanley Goodman; the Los Angeles branch is headed by Mallory Book.

Capabilities

TL: 8 Members: 6,400

Wealth: Wealthy.

Contacts: Legal Skills-18 [15]

Member Traits: Higher Purpose (Win In Court) [5].

Notable Resources: GLK&S owns their office buildings in each city they operate in, renting out most of the space to other offices.

Reaction-Time Modifier: -1

Costs and Values

Startup Cost: $1,198,080,000

Resource Value: $5,990,400

Patron Value: 20 points. Enemy Value: -30 points.

Ally and Dependent Value: The firm's lawyers and paralegals are generally 50 to 125 point characters.

Social Attributes

Type: Commercial, Legal Advocacy Loyalty: Good (13; +1)

CR: 3

Rank: Corporate Rank 0-6 [2/level]

Income Range: $2,600 (Average) to $2,600,000 (Multimillionaire 1)

Reputation: +2 (notable law firm specializing in superhuman law, among lawyers in both district attorney and civil law offices).

Notes

GLK&S handles the full spectrum of civil and criminal cases for all types of clients, including a few pro bono cases. It just happens to be the first firm any superhuman turns to when they need legal representation.

The law offices of Goodman, Lieber, Kurtzberg, and Shooter, usually shortened to GLK&S, is a law firm specializing in superhuman law. Its home office is located at Timely Plaza on the corner of 8th Avenue and West 39th Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, but it has offices in a number of other cities across the United States, including but not limited to Los Angeles, California; San Jose, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area; Chicago, Illinois; Las Vegas, Nevada; and New Orleans, Louisiana. As the preeminent law firm for superhuman law, they handle both civil and criminal cases, from lawsuits by and against various superhumans to defending them in criminal court. The firm is also involved in regular corporate, criminal, contract, and other types of legal cases.

No one seems to know when the firm was first established; official records seem to indicate it was founded just prior to World War II by three of the named partners, although a more thorough search through past cases has the firm being named representing people in several cases in the Old West and even Revolutionary era.

The cases in the firm's history include:

Human Torch vs Phineas T. Horton, a 1939 case where an artificial being won its freedom from its creator.
New York City vs Namor of Atlantis, civil cases in 1975 and 1987 dealing with the then-Prince of Atlantis's destructive rampages throughout the city prior to World War II.
Howard T. Duck vs George Lucas, a 1987 case, settled out of court, dealing with George Lucas's use of Mr. Duck's name and likeness in a 1986 movie without paying royalties.

And most recently:

Quasimodo vs United States Federal Bureau of Investigations, a case currently in front of the United States Supreme Court over whether self-aware artificial intelligences should be considered people, and therefore if deleting their core programming would be considered a death sentence.

The Quasimodo case is being handled by the firm's premier superhuman law specialist, Emerson Bale. Bale is the one attorney who has won the most cases – civil and criminal – that involved the federal government's superhuman law enforcement department, the Superhuman Hazards Investigation, Elimination, and Lockdown Department (better known to most as SHIELD).

First Post-Reboot Appearance: CAPTATIN MARVEL #12.

Design Notes:

1. This is a version of the canon Marvel firm of Goodman, Lieber, Kurtzberg, and Holliway, later called Goodman, Lieber, Kurtzberg, and Book, which primarily appeared in the early '00s run of She-Hulk, when their New York office employed the title character in her "civilian" identity of attorney Jennifer Walters.

2. The name of the firm and location are all shout-outs to Marvel: "Goodman" = Martin Goodman, first publisher of Marvel Comics; "Lieber" = Stan Lee's birth name was Stanley Lieber; "Kurtzberg" = Jack "King" Kirby's birth name was Jacob Kurtzberg; "Shooter" = Jim Shooter, long-time editor-in-chief of Marvel who instituted several practices (including writers no longer editing their own work, assistant editors, and stricter deadlines), who recently passed away; "Timely" = Marvel's original name from 1939 to around 1960; and "the corner of 8th Avenue and West 39th Street" = Marvel Comics vol 1 #1 was released August of 1939 (8/39), introducing the original android Human Torch (no relation to the Fantastic Four's Johnny Storm/Human Torch), the Golden Age crime-fighter Thomas Halloway/Angel (no relation to X-Man Warren Worthington/Angel), Namor the Sub-Mariner (who actually saw print a few months earlier in Motion Picture Funnies #1, the existence of which was forgotten before an undistributed print run was discovered in the 1980s); western hero Jim Gardley/the Masked Raider, and (white) hero of the African jungles David Rand/Ka-Zar the Great (no relation to Kevin Plunder/Ka-Zar of the Savage Land or Danny Rand/Iron Fist).